The advantages of being a cyborg

(I feel this is tangentially related to dérives. Hence, the proximity of the posts.)

I claim to be a bit of a luddite, but that with the invention of the iPod, my newfound blogging habit, and that beautiful little circle of light on my sleeping laptop that looks like it’s breathing (you mac users know what I mean), that claim is slowly crumbling.

But there is one marvel of modern technology that I never thought I would warm to. It seemed another one of those attempts to lump every disparate technology into one, another stupid extravagance for just-because-we-can. I am talking about the camera phone.

It wasn’t until I got to Spartanburg and examined my camera phone pictures that I realized that I had used this function at key moments, moments where I was seeing things in New York like the first time, the images that made life worth living in that sometimes stifling city. And the best part about them was that I did not expect the beauty. Had I expected it, I would have brought my camera, my sketchbook, something. But no, these were the images that caught me when I had forgotten to look, these were the images that reminded me to look. What I found when I got to Spartanburg, removed from that environment, was a nice little portrait of that city, captured in moments that were decidedly “New York” all the way up, from the Subway to the Hudson River, to the lights in tall buildings.

I am not going to post those pictures. I have other plans for them that may or may not materialize, but that I have already started playing with. What I am going to post is one camera picture from the other night, the first such picture captured in the area.